A. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to displays for printed materials and in more specific embodiments to displays for paint color cards.
B. Description of the Related Art
Displays for printed materials, including, for example, paint color cards, are readily found in retail stores and libraries, amongst other places. Within its particular context, several different types of displays have been developed for facilitating the storage, display, and dispensing of paint color cards. Some designs, such as those taught in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,312,001 and 4,003,470, incorporate pockets that are mounted to a panel. The pockets are adapted to hold a number of paint color cards, which may be removed by prospective customers.
In use, these pockets can be damaged, necessitating their replacement. Existing designs, however, incorporate barriers to easy and quick installation and removal of pockets from the display. For example, in some displays, the pockets are integral with the panel and cannot be removed or replaced without replacing the entire panel or section of the panel. In other designs, pockets may be mounted to the display with mechanical fasteners that require tools for removal. In still other displays, it is necessary to access the back of the panel or display in order to remove a pocket. This entails partially disassembling the display or otherwise moving the display so that the back of the panel is reachable. During this time, the entire display may be unusable.
Removing pockets is particularly difficult in designs that include a cascading arrangement of pockets; namely, an arrangement where adjacent pockets overlap each other. In these arrangements, the means of attaching the pocket may be rendered inaccessible by the adjacent, overlapping pocket(s). Or, the adjacent pockets may physically inhibit the removal or installation of a pocket. Under these conditions, removing one pocket requires removing adjacent pockets in order to provide sufficient access to or room around the one pocket that needs to be removed. This inhibits timely replacement of pockets.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a display for printed materials, such as paint color cards, that includes pockets for holding the printed materials that can be removed from and installed onto the display without need of tools. It would be desirable that the pockets could be removed and installed from in front of the display and without the need to access or remove the back of the display or the panel holding the pockets. It would additionally be desirable that the pockets could be removed and installed in a cascading arrangement in order to increase the density of pockets in the display. Moreover, it would be desirable if the pockets could be installed and removed without the need to remove adjacent card pockets or other sections of the display. Additionally it would be desirable if the display permitted the mounting of pockets having different dimensions so that a single display could be used to display different sized materials simultaneously.
The presently described display addresses these problems by disclosing a display that includes a pocket mounting panel and one or more card pockets that can be selectively installed in a cascading arrangement on the pocket mounting panel without the need for tools, from the front of the panel, and without the need to remove adjacent, installed card pockets.